Introducing the TimeBank Academy!
In the heart of winter, I want to share with you something new emerging: the Taos TimeBank Academy. We’re super excited about it, and think you will be, too!
The TimeBank Academy is meant to connect participants and facilitators around themes and subjects that increase our collective capacity to become the community we want to see in the world. Unlike most other workshops and classes out there today, the TimeBank Academy’s courses will happen without money changing hands. Both facilitators and participants will earn time credits.
Our first offering, beginning Feb 19 at 5:30 pm, will be an eight-week course called “Taos Community Builders,” facilitated by Maia Franz and held at UNM-Taos HIVE on Gusdorf Road. It is meant to nurture potential leaders who want to be community connectors, intercultural ambassadors, or neighborhood networkers. Weekly content will center on topics like “Events,” “Creating Culture,” “Connecting with Neighbors,” and “Challenges in Community.”
As a final product, participants will work individually or in a small team to plan and facilitate their own intersectional community event in Taos County before the end of June 2026. If they meet class expectations and attend all classes, participants will gain 12 time credits – what a great way to build relationships, gain skills, and earn time credits to spend on services you want and need.
For me, as a lifelong transformative educator, I have dreamed of a “people’s university” for a long time. I have helped start a middle school and a high school in Taos County, as well as the Taos Initiative for Life Together (TiLT). All three of these were designed to be “life labs” — learning communities where our own lives are the subject matter, and collectively we can learn to develop better systems and habits so we can live more in harmony with each other and the Earth. What’s a better goal than that?
“Taos Community Builders” is our first course offered through the TimeBank Academy, but with your help we want to offer more content in the coming months. Might you want to facilitate a future course? We are looking for proposals for themes that focus on action-oriented citizenship, centered on topics such as “Creating a Practitioner’s Guild within the TimeBank,” “Improving Composting & Recycling in Taos County,” “Responding to a County-Wide Emergency,” or “Getting to Know Your Local Government.” What kind of citizen-boosting, neighbor-nurturing, capacity-creating class might you imagine?
We look forward to your ideas.
Peace and good,
Todd
Interested in joining the first course?
Learn more about Taos Community Builders and sign up here